Final Report: Hulsey/AE911Truth's WTC7 Study

[Oystein]

About 10 hours ago, AE911T put this on their Facebook page:
Source: https://www.facebook.com/ae911truth/videos/250378459429645/

We are proud to announce the completion of the Final Report of the 4-year Study of World Trade Center Building 7 performed by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
...
Richard Gage ... introduces the presenter, Civil/Structural engineer Roland Angle, CE, director of our Project Due Diligence outreach effort to the engineering community.
...
Roland provides the highlights of the study that was led by Professor Leroy Hulsey and his team of PhD researchers at UAF. Professor Hulsey, a top forensic structural engineer of 50 years, has served as Chairman of the Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering at the university.
...
... We encourage you to download the report at https://www.AE911Truth.org ...
...
... If you were not listening live with us today – but on the archive video of the webinar - we can still amend your name to the list of concerned structural engineers ...

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At the bottom of the post I see a video preview and this text (preceded by a symbol of a video camera): "Tomorrow at 21:00".
I am a little confused now - has there been a presentation already? Will it be held tomorrow? I received an AE newsletter an hour before this Facebook post that said that the release of the final report is "now" only 2 days away - so tomorrow (Thursday), it seems.

At any rate, I see nothing new, especially no final report to download, either at https://www.ae911truth.org/ or the UAF project page http://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/

I find it mildly curious that AE911Truth would direct people to their website for download and not the universities, and also that not Hulsey but an AE man gets to present it.

 

[deirdre]

I find it mildly curious that AE911Truth would direct people to their website for download and not the universities, and also that not Hulsey but an AE man gets to present it.

The University is likely shut down for the year. Which technically shouldn't effect uploading a paper, but "no crowds" due to coronavirus and Hulsey is pretty old..so I can see him not doing a presentation.

 

[econ41]

The University is likely shut down for the year. Which technically shouldn't effect uploading a paper, but "no crowds" due to coronavirus and Hulsey is pretty old..so I can see him not doing a presentation.

It could also be a form of protection. An old man who has given years of faithful uncontroversial service [then does this]. So why not let him fade away from the scene and at the same time take the spotlight off the UAF so it's culpabilty is not fully exposed. Bottom line "Hope the whole sad affair gets forgotten."

 

[Oystein]

Seeing that they said in a previous news article the other day that they would have to change their plans around the release of the report because of the Covid crisis, I think deirdre more likely is closer to the mark:

The Coronavirus has meant that presentations, meetings with Congress, and the national conference where we planned to promote this report have all been cancelled or postponed.

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Perhaps "presentations" includes anything in Fairbanks.

 

[Mick West]

At any rate, I see nothing new, especially no final report to download, either at https://www.ae911truth.org/ or the UAF project page http://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/

It's on the UAF page now:
http://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/
Their link: https://bit.ly/Hulsey-Report-Final
Goes to https://files.wtc7report.org/file/p...llapse-of-World-Trade-Center-7-March-2020.pdf

 

[Mick West]

I'm attaching the draft report and the final report in compressed form. Drag these into the excellent Draftable.com site, which will give you a very easy way of comparing all the changes
https://draftable.com/compare

Also, try this link - let me know if it works without uploading the files:
https://draftable.com/compare/hEzyiDqhRMkq

 

[Mick West]

For a final report, you'd think they would have caught this:

 

[Mick West]

A rather significant change here, where they change the formula used to calculate K, changing it from 6,622 lbs/inch to just 552 !!

 

[Mick West]

They have added the text "The movement shown is highly amplified for clarity. The actual scale of the displacements are presented to the right." to all the "falling over" type images, like:


Closeup of that scale:


E+3 means time 10^3, or times 1000. So the green there is around 1500 inches. Or 125 feet. That seems to be how much the building has been displaced in the "highly amplified" image. This suggests it's not highly amplified.

They mention it again here. Seemingly thinking it's actually just inches.

 

[Mick West]

The old section 4.5 seems to have been totally removed.




The removed text:

4.5 Results of Simultaneous Core Column Failure Analysis
Finding that NIST’s scenario was not feasible — and would not result in the observed
straight-down collapse even if it were partially feasible — we then simulated the simultaneous
failure of all core columns over 8 stories. The linear static analysis and dynamic analysis results
from these simulations are shown in Figures 4.17 to 4.20 below.

This hypothesis was based on the premise that the simultaneous failure of all core
columns would pull the exterior columns inward and buckle them. We were skeptical of this
hypothesis because we believe such a sequence of failures would have produced relative
displacements of the exterior sheathing and deformations at the windows, which were not
observed in videos of the collapse. Nonetheless, we simulated this sequence of failures to
determine if it could produce any of the key features described above.

Based on this analysis, we found that a simultaneous failure of all core columns would
cause the building to tip to the southwest. We attribute this behavior to WTC 7 having fewer
exterior columns on its south side than on its north side and on the reported damage to columns
on the southwest corner caused by the impact of debris from the collapse of WTC 1 — damage
that we included in our model.

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Which reduces their analysis findings:


As I remember the failure of all the core columns was a favorite hypothesis of Tony Szamboti

 

[Mick West]

They appear to have responded to the criticism of their fake "dynamic analysis" by re-labling it "dynamic time history finite element analysis"

This is a new (short) section:

4.4 Linear and Dynamic Analytical Methods

Linear static analysis and dynamic time history analysis results from these simulations
are shown in Figures 4.8 to 4.16 below. A time history analysis accounts for mass, velocity, and
acceleration as a function of time. Direct integration is used by SAP2000 when performing a
time history analysis. We examined structural response for a time history analysis using linear
elastic behavior. We also studied the behavior considering material and geometric non-linearity
effects. P-delta was not included in these results.

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This kind of feels like a glossing over, but with the same result. The "dynamic analysis" is no such thing. "Time History Analysis" is really another term for nonlinear dynamic analysis.
http://www.ijscer.com/uploadfile/2015/0429/20150429075958589.pdf

Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis It is known as Time history analysis. It is an important technique for structural seismic analysis especially when the evaluated structural response is nonlinear.
...
Time history analysis is a step-by step analysis of the dynamic response of a structure to a specified loading that may vary with time.

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They say:

A time history analysis accounts for mass, velocity, and acceleration as a function of time.

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Which seems nonsensical. The mass of individual structure elements does not change. Gravity does not change.

What does change? Velocity, yes, but also connections, contact, and collisions - none of which seem to have been modeled.

 

[Oystein]

Here are the public comments - mine are not included: https://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/UAF-WTC7-Draft-Report-Public-Comments.pdf

Anybody else missing their comments?

 

[Mick West]

Anybody else missing their comments?

I didn't submit directly. But I get a couple of mentions:

This guy is expressing my questions far better than i could...
https://www.metabunk.org/sept-3-2019-release-of-hulseys-wtc7-draft-reportanalysis.
t10890/
what about these strange visualisations or animations? How could they be explained?
I am convinced that WTC7 did not collapse due to fire, but these videos by Hulsey’s
team are also causing question marks.

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And rather indirectly:

I'm a 32-yearsold German who follows the discourse about the September 11 attacks
with great interest. I would like to draw the attention of Professor Hulsey and his
doctoral students to the criticism of a German nuclear physicist named Dr. Holm Gero
Hümmler who published a strong criticism of the study on his Internet blog.Dr.
Hümmler's criticism is in German, but I took the trouble to translate his whole article into
English and would now like to send it to you. Although his article is full of polemics,
there are still some interesting arguments in it. In his blog article, Dr. Hümmler quotes
two other critical comments on Professor Hulsey's study. These two sources are: 1)
West, Mick: Some Problems with the UAF/Hulsey/AE911Truth WTC 7 Draft Report.
Published on Youtube on September8, 2019.Online here:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OClixCTdDw
2)Kostack Studio: UAF WTC 7
Evaluation Simulation Plausibility Check (Leroy Hulsey, AE911Truth)Published on
Youtube on September 8, 2019:Online here:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVE3YwRgU9k

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[Oystein]

Also, try this link - let me know if it works without uploading the files:
https://draftable.com/compare/hEzyiDqhRMkq

Yes, works great!

 

[Trojan]

So the two peer reviewers listed are either an acquaintance of Tony Szamboti or an acquaintance of Steven Jones (both having published on 9/11). What happened to impartial peer review?

 

[benthamitemetric]

I'm also attaching for everyone's ease of reference a word document comparison between the two reports (draft and final) that I prepared with Change-Pro (the professional document comparison software I use in my legal practice). This shows more clearly which graphics were altered, added or removed, and will let people copy and paste into their comments here any revisions of interest.

 

[Mick West]

EXTERNAL PEER REVIEWERS

Gregory Szuladzinski, Ph.D
Chartered Consulting Engineer
Analytical Service Company

Robert Korol, Ph.D
Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering
McMaster University

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Szuladzinski is co-author of a paper with Szamoboti and Jones with is just a meaningless critique of the Bazant strawman.
https://metabunk.org/attachments/10....40038/?hash=d71480de88b60db9c9dc60a8423ad7e2

The only complete
hypothesis of the global collapse mechanism of the Towers is a successive flattening of
stories associated with compressive column failure and referred to as a Progressive Column
Failure mode or PCF in brief. (In the past this mode was often referred to as pancaking, but
this term is not used here to avoid ambiguities). It is explained here why PCF could not be
the mode of the ultimate destruction.

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And Korol is a co-author with them on the Europhysics News article:
https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016-47-4.pdf
Which also goes after Bazant.

So both seem to be firmly in the 9/11 truth camp.

 

[Oystein]

Attached is my comments on the Draft Report which I had mailed to publiccomment@ae911truth.org - but they are not included in the "Public Comments" that were published yesterday: https://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/UAF-WTC7-Draft-Report-Public-Comments.pdf

I emailed them to Hulsey directly yesterday. No response yet.

(This PDF contains one edit on the first page: I deleted my real name and contact info under "Prepared by:" and substituted with merely "[Oystein]", and also the file name has "Oy" in place of my real initials)

 

[Mick West]

In AE911's presentation of the final report:
Source: https://youtu.be/KOooHlaA0pE?t=1745


Angle shows the ludricous tipping over animation:


And says "this would be what that looks like", as the building goes on to do this:

Which he shows as if that's a perfectly normal-looking collapse of a tall building.



Yes in the final report, as I noted above, they take pains to downplay how silly this looks by saying:

In all cases, failure simulations were based on finite element analysis results and the deformations presented were scaled by the software to help the reader visualize direction and relative magnitude for the displaced shape(s). Displaced magnitudes in each figure are exaggerated and are not scaled to the building geometry. Displacement values are typically given in inches within each figure.

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But if we look in the report for the static analysis they base this animation on, we have figure 4.14 (Final)


And again the scale:

E+3, so x1,000, so displacements of 1,600 inches. Which is what is shown.

So we've got Angle saying "this is what that looks like", and we've got the report saying that's what the numbers are, and then we've got the report also say it's just a few inches.

They seem to have no idea at all what is going on. Perhaps the problem here is that old simulations were done years ago by Zhili Quan, and the newer writers (and Angle) don't fully understand them.

So what are AE911 telling us? That the building would tip over a little or a lot in the NIST scenario? Obviously the tipping over a lot, as described, is physically impossible - the result of a misapplication of static analysis to a dynamic situation. And if it's just tipping over a little, well then, that's what actually happened that day.

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

I find much of their reasoning and assumptions hard to accept. If the entire building was moving down... it means that everything which held it up was no longer doing that. Their assertions is that the only way to accomplish this is CD of all the columns over 8 stories (to account for the FF movement).

However if the columns are displaced and the axial load paths interrupted...they become non performing... as if the column is no longer there.

While NIST didn't go there... and focused on an initiating event on floor 12-13... it seems that the explanation which matches observations is more like:

First event was in the NE quadrant which led to a complete interior collapse of that quadrant.
The first even caused the massive transfers on floors 5-7 to collapse and with that pull or push columns to the west in the core so that they were DISPLACED and non performing. When the core columns were non performing... there would be no more interior columns and the interior floor plates would collapse. So the east quadrant collapse led to a rapid progression of displacement/failures of the interior (core) columns from east to west (and accounts for the timing of the dropping of the roof structures) hollowing out the building.

But could the perimeter moment frame stand with the entire building hollowed out by the complete interior collapse? Not likely. The material from the interior collapse would almost certainly bulge outward... and in so doing exert lateral outward forces on the lower perimeter columns which supported the moment frame which began on floor 8. The moment frame had 57 columns on its four sides. But below it the support was reduced using "transfers" to only 26 columns. If these, 26 became non performing... the perimeter moment frame would collapse at essentially FF. This accounts for the "motion" and appearance of the collapse.

The north side had only 5 columns plus the shared corner columns
The east side had only 2 columns plus the shared corner columns
The west side had only 4 columns plus the shared corner columns
The south side had only 10 columns plus the shared corner columns

It is certainly plausible that a local failure in the NE quadrant kicked off the chain reaction. This could have been at the location NIST modeled. It also could have been lower or higher up... but it would have to kick off the progressive runaway collapse of the transfers on floors 5-7 to hollow out the interior.

And yes the building's perimeter would come pretty much straight down.

 

[Jaytje]

Looking at the comments on the final report from Hulsey, its obvious that the whole WTC7 collapse is a non-issue nowadays with engineers and architects. I wonder if truthers are going to complain about the fact that this was all paid for by AE911 so a little biased towards [the AE911 position], or about the collapse videos, which they seemed eager to do with the NIST collapse videos. I guess we won't see any comparison videos from that side coming anytime soon.

 

[Oystein]

I just found that, at the AE911Truth website, they updated the PDF document with all the Public Comments, to now include my comments (pages 13-25):
https://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/UAF-WTC7-Draft-Report-Public-Comments-Updated.pdf
(Also attached)

The UAF-INE still links the old file name, which misses the "-Updated" bit and produces an Error 404:
https://www.ae911truth.org/images/PDFs/UAF-WTC7-Draft-Report-Public-Comments.pdf

I had inquired about this via email to both Hulsey and the Director of the INE a month ago. The Director responded the same day; Hulsey took almost 4 weeks to reply - asking about my forensic engineering and fire protection engineering credentials and the names of my collaborators, so he would know how to respond to my comments

 

[Mick West]

Hulsey took almost 4 weeks to reply - asking about my forensic engineering and fire protection engineering credentials and the names of my collaborators, so he would know how to respond to my comments

He never replied to me.

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

Thanks for posting this and your detailed comment you submitted. I skimmed this and I am not a structural engineer, but an architect. I DO appreciate the logic of your comments. My sense is that Hulsey report amounts to sound and fury and signifies nothing.

One thing that has struck me about the truth guys obsessing over free fall is that that there was a considerable period before the exterior appears to drop at FF and the first observations of failures indicated by the collapsing roof structures. It is worth considering that there was a collapse of the interior in this period which led the the collapse of the axial support of the exterior moment frame and attached curtain wall. It was a one two three... one -the interior collapse two the collapsed debris bugles and destroys the axial support from grade to floor 8 (+/-108' above grade. then three... the facade without support collapse at FF from floor 8. The former LED to the later because the fallen debris "bulged" outward undermining the columns. FF is hardly mysterious and very much expected if the axial support of the moment frame is destroyed. AND... how could it not be destroyed if the entire interior of the building collapsed bulged outward from ground to floor 8? The facade/exterior structure below flr 8 and above were very different. This was a natural "fracture" location.

And of of course as you note how absurd to not consider all the weakening that was going on over multiple floors throughout the portion of the foot print where the fires raged. It's absurd to think one node failure unzipped the entire building as much as it is to think that many nodes failed simultaneously causing it to collapse as we saw. High rise buildings are designed such that one column/node failure does not collapse a building because loads can be redistributed and there is engineered in to the design excess capacity.

When there would be a progression of failures of nodes it would take some time... it would not be a simultaneous event. I believe NIST did not model this exactly but there sim does show the concept of progression. It may be too complex to model the collapse we witnessed without more data. But this is beyond my pay grade.

Nice work Oy! I predict you will not receive a satisfactory response.

 

[Oystein]

He never replied to me.

I think it helped that I also emailed the Director of the Institute of Northern Engineering at the engineering college of the UAF, Dr. David Barnes, who agreed to inquire with Hulsey about the whereabouts of my comments - although he disclaimed competence in the matter, not being a structural engineer.

...
Nice work Oy! I predict you will not receive a satisfactory response.

Thanks!
Hulsey's response was bellicose and peppered with seeds of excuses to dismiss my comments based on authority and credentials to avoid facing their substance. I made the same experience with Steven Jones, Niels Harrit, Tony Szamboti... currently, Wayne Coste is trying that ploy on Facebook.

I even sense a conspiracy: That Hulsey already has been advised by his AE911Truth handlers about who I am (little doubt someone there, certainly Tony, knows my real name and that I am Oystein), and that he shares my communications with them, to coordinate a response. So far the strategy has been to ignore me. This may have stopped because of my getting Dr. Barnes involved.

Perhaps a strategy could be to find an interested freelance journalist with a chance of placing an article about this UAF scandal on major media. Just to get the attention of UAF's and INE's leadership.

 

[Mick West]

Something just occurred to me and I can't remember if it was discussed before, or if it's in Hulsey's report. So just putting it in case it rings any bells. No worries if it's been too long

Hulsey does a series of static linear analyses and then removed any columns that are over-loaded between each one. Besides this being ridiculous in itself, I wonder if the failure criteria for each column was the design load capacity of that column. Because after some columns fail, the adjacent columns then lack bracing in that direction. This would reduce the load capacity, I think significantly. In addition, the falling adjacent columns and floors would create various lateral loads on the remaining columns



Like in the above, the columns with green circles used to have columns next to them. What is their load capacity before, during, and after the collapse of the missing columns?

What value did Hulsey use.

and something of an aside, thinking about this problem makes it pretty clear yet again that Hulsey needed to use dynamic non-linear analysis - the failure to do so being his greatest failing.

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

Something just occurred to me and I can't remember if it was discussed before, or if it's in Hulsey's report. So just putting it in case it rings any bells. No worries if it's been too long

Hulsey does a series of static linear analyses and then removed any columns that are over-loaded between each one. Besides this being ridiculous in itself, I wonder if the failure criteria for each column was the design load capacity of that column. Because after some columns fail, the adjacent columns then lack bracing in that direction. This would reduce the load capacity, I think significantly. In addition, the falling adjacent columns and floors would create various lateral loads on the remaining columns



Like in the above, the columns with green circles used to have columns next to them. What is their load capacity before, during, and after the collapse of the missing columns?

What value did Hulsey use.

and something of an aside, thinking about this problem makes it pretty clear yet again that Hulsey needed to use dynamic non-linear analysis - the failure to do so being his greatest failing.

This question raises the issue of how loads are redistributed when beam, girders and columns fail. So... lets imagine cols 79, 80 and 81 collapsing in an instant. What would happen? They supported floor loads of the East side. Some of the floor loads were carried by the eastern most core columns and the columns of the perimeter of the east side. So YES bracing would disappear with the collapse... but the columns would also be "unloaded" as the floors likely collapse with the 3 columns. Lack of bracing DOES weaken columns. How much? Is it more or less than the axial loads that the floors represented? We know that too slender columns can self buckle... so unloading may not matter.

It appears that the perimeter around the east side floors did not buckle. But there was a kink and the entire frame moved as a unit with the kink as a virtual hinge.

I posed the question years ago... could the failure of a single column collapse an entire high rise. I suppose it would depend on the design and which column.

But it does appear that the collapse of 7wtc was "assisted" by the numerous transfers in the design... which were used to move axially loads laterally.

 

[FastIndy]

I'm not sure if this is the best or most recent thread to discuss it, but the results in the animation below and the apparent increase in size of the falling part of the building have garnered a little bit of justified attention. The increase in apparent size is almost certainly due to an effect found in linear finite element software that relies on an approximation that requires small angular displacements. For most solvers it's a sin(Θ)=Θ approximation, but it's a very fundamental and important simplification that allows the equations to be solved.



I've reproduced the same effect below by applying a lateral load to the top of a structural element that causes a large deformation. This is an isometric view, so lines that are parallel will be rendered as parallel. Note that the software really does believe that the top of the bar has stretched by 34 percent! If you interrogated the model above, I'm quite confident you would find that the structural elements on the top of WTC7 have grown significantly. All of a sudden you have a 330ft long roof that's stretched to 430ft. The fundamental assumptions that make the model valid have been thoroughly violated.